The present invention relates to Web Services and, more particularly, to extending the operations that can be invoked on a given Web Service without changing the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) definitions for the Web Service.
A Web Service is a software system that supports interoperable machine to machine interaction over a data communication network. In the domain of Web Services, the operations that can be invoked on a given Web Service are typically defined in a WSDL definition document for the Web Service. Sometimes business needs or a change in feature set supported on a server platform make it desirable to add new operations to the Web Service. The addition of new operations, however, presents certain technical challenges.
Conventionally, new operations have been incorporated by updating the WSDL definition document for the Web Service. However, this can introduce backward compatibility problems for older applications that rely on the original WSDL definitions. While it is possible to address backward compatibility problems by versioning the Web Service to allow older applications to use the original WSDL definitions and newer applications to use the updated WSDL definitions, allowing multiple versions of WSDL definitions to coexist for a given Web Service adds substantial complexity.